Duron 'stable' overclocking?

[Foomanchu]

I am in the market for a CHEAP second system. Naturally, I am looking for the best bang for the buck, so I am leaning towards a Duron. My question is: what do you feel is the best Duron to overclock? I ask this because I have read some of the archives here and the database on overclockers.com, which provide "conflicting" data. According to overclockers.com, it would appear that the Duron 600 would be the best value, as it has the highest successful MHz rating achieved by a user. It also has the 2nd highest average o/c'ed MHz rating. When reading the archives on this board, it appears that the average "stable" operating MHz for the 600 is somewhere around 800. I am looking for a solution that would be stable enough for a heavy quake playing person without crashing after 30 minutes of use. Would I be better off just getting a 750 MHz Duron, since it is only around $40 more and not overclocking it? I seem to remember reading somewhere that there were MINIMAL gains in overclocking a Duron. I cant seem to find many articles where an overclocked Duron has been tested against its un-o/c'ed counter-part. There is plenty of info on HOW to o/c it, but rarely any on the RESULTS of it. Any links?

Also, what does HSF stand for? I see people refer to it as cooling their duron, so I assume its some type of cooler. Can you provide me with a link to an HSF that would be adequate for o/c'ing a Duron?

Thanks in advance and sorry about the length =).

 

[BurntKooshie]

HSF means Heatsink/Fan combination - the thingy that cools your CPU down . If you can find the Duron 600's, you've got very good chances of a rather high overclock...I can't give specifics, because I don't keep track of numbers....but I'm sure others will let you know how its going for them .

The reason why I said "if you can find them" is because they are no longer in production (AMD's binsplits are WAY too high to sell them anymore)...if you look at pricewatch, you can only buy one, which is usually a sign that a) its a good deal and b) that there's a limited quantity left, which in this case, is caused by the fact that its no longer in production.

 

[BurntKooshie]

Doh....I didn't asnwer your qeustion about which one would be good...Many like the Orbs (take a look at 2cool for a few examples. Pretty much anything there should be good, but the Golden Orbs aren't quite as good as the rest, but it is awful cheap...stay clear of the smaller vantec units, along with the Global win CPM-32 there though, those will likely not be enough if you are overclocking.

I'm sure others will have more suggestions.

 

[paulip88]

OK. I like the original questions

About the highest OC for a Duron 600:
Almost ANY Duron 600 can run at 800MHz stable if you up the voltage enough. However, most of the more recent batches of 600s have much higher limits. I know that typically the week 36s run around 900-1100MHz.

About stability of OCed system:
800MHz should be stable on most systems given that you have good cooling from your HSF (Heat Sink + Fan). Game performance should be good and your video card would most likely be your limiting factor when it comes to framerates.

About "minimal gains":
The minimal gains thing only applied to the really high speeds. In other words, if you OC from 1GHz to 1.1GHz, there will be minimal gains (lets say 4% increase in speed from a 10% OC). However, if you OC from 600MHz to 700MHz, you will get noticeable gains (lets say 15% increase in speed from a 17% OC). The reason for this is that at high speeds, the Duron is starved for data since it has a small cache. No point in running faster if there is nothing to do. However at slower speeds, there is still enough data in the cache to benefit from some modest OCing.

Cooling for the Duron:
HSF = Heat Sink + Fan
You use this to cool your CPU. Some good ones are:
Alpha PAL6035
GlobalWin FO32 or FOP38
Taisol
I would not go with any of the orbs though. These are popular, but their performance on AMD chips is questionable. The Chrome Orb works, but is not one of the better HSFs available. The other orbs un the risk of permanently damaging your CPU.

 

[SilverBack]

The Duron's made after week 34 and up seem to be better at overclocking.
Many have reported 1 GHz oc's.
I have a week 28 that goes to 900 ( 600MHz )..

 

[jinsonxu]

Agree with paulip88's points.
The Durons usually get saturate their cache at about 900Mhz so more from this point doesn't scale well in performance.

 

[buildingacomputer]

My week 27 Duron 600 even came with L1 bridges connected. I mean it's that old. Currently at 800, 1.63 V. Temp reaches 38-39C after game. No plan to overclock it further since 800 was my goal and will not be used by me.

 

[jinsonxu]

Well, those week 27s usually can hit 900-950Mhz.